


Better Days Are Shining Through

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, HP: EWE, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 23:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10931946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Padma and Parvati navigate the post-war.





	Better Days Are Shining Through

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaramelShadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaramelShadows/gifts).



> Mark 2: Now with 100% less rapid tone change and an actual happy ending.

The first time Parvati kissed her they were sleeping in the Gryffindor dorm after the final battle. Padma’s limbs were still shaking from Amycus Carrow’s last cruciatus curse. The kiss was wet and salty from Parvati’s tears, it came out of nowhere and ended just as fast. Afterwards Parvati buried her face in the pillow and cried so hard she rocked the bed. Padma fought her uncooperative limbs to hold her and fell asleep to her sister’s sobs. She woke up stiff with Parvati holding her arms in position in her sleep.

 

There was a list, page five of The Prophet every day for a year and then annually for ten. Dead and Missing. A list of names in columns, new or moved names in italics. Lavender’s name was on it from the start. Missing. Everyday Parvati opened the paper to that list and every day she cried. Every night she climbed in to Padma’s bed and pressed a wet, salty kiss to her lips and cried her pillow stiff. They had never been close, not like this. They shared a bed when they had to as children, once or twice a year when family descended and never cuddled but every morning Padma woke up, stiff arms wrapped around her sister. Fixing Parvati took as long and was as hard as fixing the Wizarding Wold but at least Padma knew she wanted to do it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to fix or save a world that had thrown Kevin and Annabel to the Dementors for stealing magic.

 

The final battle and Voldemort’s death wasn’t the end. The victors didn’t control the government and there were plenty of people who agreed with the Voldemort’s philosophy if not his actions who now had the power to enact that philosophy without the mad tyrant. Collecting and arresting the losing combatants after the battle was easy. Not having the muggleborns also arrested, not so easy.

 

There were two governments of Wizarding Britain for three tense months, one in London and one in Hogsmead. Everyone who was capable and overage was still drafted; spying on the Ministry, rescuing any muggleborns that weren’t on the list while Voldemort controlled Hogwarts, tracking down people hidden away by now dead or captured traitors to Voldemort’s glorious cause.

 

Padma was more tired than when they crept through the halls waging civil war, a colonel in an army of teenagers, and still everything was a mess. The Ministry in London controlled the tests, sending up the Dark Arts OLWs and NEWTs, so no one was officially examined. St Mungo’s was neutral provided you could get there without the ministry finding out so the Infirmary heaved with patients and anyone with any skill or willingness to learn was put to work. She changed beds, dressed wounds, tried to comfort and feed children whose parents had died in front of them or who had killed themselves. Hogwarts was still the safest place in Britain with no privacy to be had. She and Parvati shared the Gryffindor dorm with ten other girls and fell into bed exhausted every night and woke to screams from the children too young to have mastered the silencing charm every night. Their pillow stiff with Parvati’s tears and her salty kiss on Padma’s lips.

 

The list, and its publication in the Prophet, was the first sign of the end. It started being published the day after Voldemort fell containing only the names of half-bloods and purebloods with an accompanying article reminding readers that muggleborns were magic thieves and all wanted criminals. Simultaneously a letter began circulating freely to every witch or wizard in Britain listing all known missing and dead with a request that any new information be owled to PotterWatch. Two months later the prophet began including the half-bloods and purebloods from the PotterWatch list and updating their list when the PotterWatch list updated. A month after that Amos Diggory became Interim Minister and the first of the Voldemort era laws were repealed. Muggleborns were no longer criminals but still couldn’t purchase wands or sit their OWLs or NEWTS. A day later the Prophet updated their list to contain all the names on the PotterWatch list. The same day all records from the Muggleborn Registration Committee was leaked to the “Other” Ministry in Hogsmead.

 

Padma was still working what were supposed to be eight hour shifts in the infirmary in what was now a “Practical Apprenticeship” that required far too much reading but Parvati’s role had ended. Initially she minded and when possible taught a group of four to ten year olds who couldn’t leave Hogwarts while the Professors and those who would normally be teaching them dealt with the damage to the castle. Three months after the final battle, the castle was repaired and in an attempt at stability normal teaching had resumed for over elevens and a series of volunteers organised by Molly Weasley taught the four to ten year olds during the same hours in spare classrooms.

 

Available and good at concise notetaking Parvati was one of the people assigned to review the records. Every day she read the records; taking names, dates, and sentences. Every day she got stiller and quieter. She still slept in Padma’s bed wrapped in her arms but her tears stopped and the salty kisses ended too. Only the list made her show any emotion now.

 

Padma thought it was, hoped it was a good thing. She was so busy, so tired and there was always more to do. The war broke so many things and she had thought that the Interim Minister’s appointment would make everything easier, would fix things but instead there was more. There were committees about the “Voldemort laws”, what were good, what were bad, what should be repealed, if they were repealed what should replace them, the old laws or new laws, if the laws were repealed should people be convicted for their actions while the laws were in force. There were so many people who wanted the laws to remain. So many things that were still in place and so many people who just wanted the old status quo to come back.

 

She wanted to scream and run far away with everyone she cared about from this fucking world but there was too much to do so she swallowed it all down and she thought that was what Parvati was doing.

 

Until the day Parvati broke down. She read the list at breakfast like normal and she went to work. She came back and they ate. Padma didn’t know what she said but Parvati started screaming, and crying. She threw herself against her. Beat bruises in to Padma’s breasts with her fists. Cried until her face was raw. Screamed until her voice was hoarse. Kicked and hit until her legs couldn’t hold her anymore and her punches were just taps. Then she kissed her. Salty and wet, her tongue pushing against Padma’s lips. Her arms wrapped around her.

 

Padma let her. Her sister who survived this mess and would continue survive this mess. Who she would do anything to help, to protect. She kissed her because it was what Parvati wanted and she would do anything that would make her happy.

 

If it made Parvati’s day better to kiss, to hold, to caress, to do whatever, Padma would do it.  At least she knew she wanted Parvati happy and back. The longer this post-war went on the less she knew about anything else.

 

So they continued, Padma worked in the infirmary providing the only available health care to muggleborns and Parvati continued reading the records.

 

Sometimes Parvati would come to the end of the current set of records but there was always something new smuggled out of the Ministry and sometimes rarely her research would return. Sometimes they would find people hidden or hiding and Padma’s world would be filled with the starving traumatised victims Parvati read about. Which was worse, to treat the victims and clean the dead or to read their abusers’ justification.

 

The post-war continued. No one could or would be tried for actions undertaken between the fall of the Ministry and the Final Battle, the Interim Minister declared, but every law changed or implemented during that period would be examined by committee. A shitty compromise that no one liked. St Mungos officially began accepting muggleborn patients and the Padma’s work moved to London. Parvati moved with the tribunals. Note taking in some, presenting evidence in others.

 

They rented rooms in Diagon Alley. One bed but no one questioned it. Everyone held their loved ones close. They’d got used to the gaps and holes of Hogwarts and the full school had worked to repair what could be and reclaim what couldn’t but people were still too scared to return to Diagon. The gap where Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour was still and empty hole, Ollivander was operating out of Hogwarts still, the bookshelves at Flourish and Blotts still gaped with censored books, and the Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes hadn’t reopened.

 

At night Parvati screamed her fears into Padma’s skin. Bit deep bruises into her shoulders and cried bone wrenching sobs. Padma wrapped tired arms around her and promised they would survive.

 

Life went on and time past. The post war was made of shitty compromises with only the fear of another war holding them. The laws went back to before. No one was happy but the country was stable. The economy stopped tanking. You knew who was on what side and who had been an active fighter. Muttering voices on both sides protested that none but the captured Death Eaters from the final battle had been tried.

 

Parvati cried less often. They stopped finding people and Padma stopped treating newly traumatised victims. The list stopped changing and the Prophet stopped printing it every day. The committees ended and Parvati became a departmental secretary for the Wizengamot. The alley slowly recovered. Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes reopened and Flourish and Blotts shelves refilled. Parvati would walk back to their rooms chatting with Ron Weasley and she began to smile again. The space where Ice Cream Parlour was became a revolving door of short lived shops.

 

They would sit at their rickety table - neither secure enough to start purchasing new furniture - every Wednesday evening and ate take out from which ever restaurant was in the Ice Cream Parlour this week. There was a month of fish and chips wrapped in old copies of the Prophet, the photos complaining as the grease soaked into them and another of Indian food that couldn’t compare to their mother’s cooking. Padma would find herself browsing the shelves of Flourish and Blotts, finding muggle fiction slotted among the Cauldron Romances which she would read late at night Parvati’s face pressed into her shoulder and soft puffs of breath tickling her nipples.

 

The list updated every year and every year the number of missing reduced. Through circulation in other Wizarding enclaves and confidential confessions of the remaining Death Eaters people were found. The Prophet reported the newly found bodies in gory detail. It was a relief to know for certain and hell to read.

 

The post-war slowly became the new normal. They didn’t jump at loud noises anymore and it became strange to think that there hadn’t always been a patch of new stone on the side of Hogwarts or that the shop next to Flourish and Blotts had once been the same timber frame construction and had a similarly impressive lean. Ollivander finally returned to Diagon Alley after five years operating out of Hogwarts and promptly retired back to the castle.

 

They brought furniture that hadn’t come with the rooms and Parvati spent a balmy summer weekend bribing Ron and his brothers with spicy home cooking for help moving it in and painting the walls. Padma came home from her shift to piles of books in the living room, three walls of floor to ceiling bookshelves and three Weasely brothers polishing of a biriyani at their new kitchen table as Padma laughed. Their bedroom had two full size wardrobes full and a half size one three-quarters full of Parvati’s clothes. Every time she had to drag her shirts out of the quarter space remaining Padma swore at her clothes horse of a sister who filled their cupboards with clothes but still had to be wrestled out of Padma’s clothes twice a week. Their mantle was full of photos and it was a shock every time she looked to realise only one was from before the war. Laughter had slowly replaced tears in their home.

 

Ten years after the war there were thirteen people left missing on the list at the top in alphabetical order was Lavender Brown. Parvati didn’t scream or cry to read it although she welcomed Padma’s embrace. “I hoped this year we’d know.” She said.


End file.
